Darren is now a professional blogger. In addition to running Digital Photography School, he is also a cofounder of b5media, a stable of around 300 blogs on a range of different subjects. That’s given him a huge amount of valuable knowledge about what it takes to create a successful web site. He makes that information available on www.ProBlogger.com and again earns money from ads and affiliate links on those pages.
Whereas Digital Photography School is a blog about Darren’s passion, ProBlogger is a blog about his profession. Both earn money.
The Value of Your Niche—How Keywording Can Boost the Price of Your Passion
While web sites about either your profession or your passion can earn money, they won’t necessarily make the same amount of money. The most important factors that determine the value of a web site are:
• Content
• Traffic
• Revenue systems
Content includes quality and quantity (the more frequently you post, the more views you’ll win), but it also covers topic. Some topics simply pay more than others. You might be able to get a KaChing by publishing a web site on any subject at all, but the sound alone won’t tell you how much money is going into the cash register until you count it.
That was something that Darren Rowse discovered very quickly. His first blog, which was mostly about spirituality, built an audience. But because it’s a topic with little commercial value, it didn’t generate much money.
A site about the Bible, for example, will largely attract ads offering Bible study courses. These might be supplied by nonprofit or religious organizations that have few funds to pay for ad clicks and little to gain when they do pick up a lead. The amount the publisher will pay for a click will be relatively low.
However, when Darren began writing camera reviews, he didn’t just pick up lots of additional readers, he also picked up higher-paying ads. Someone reading camera reviews is exactly the sort of person that camera stores most want to attract. Those stores will happily compete to put their name—and a link to their online store—in front of those readers. The result will be much higher payments each time a reader clicks an on ad, because there’s a reasonable chance that a percentage of those readers will pay an advertiser hundreds of dollars for a new camera.
This is where things can start to become a little dangerous. There’s no shortage of companies on the Web offering lists of the highest-paying AdSense keywords. They certainly look useful. At a glance, you’ll be able to see that a web site about “purchase structured settlements,” for example, can generate $53.48 for every click on an AdSense ad. A page about a “Phoenix DUI attorney” can bring up ads worth $50, and “California mesothelioma doctors” are worth $46.14 per click.
Compared to the usual dollar or two per click, those look like giant KaChings. Generate just three or four clicks on ads like that every day and you could be making a cool $6,000 a month in additional income.
If only it were that easy. It might work, at least for a while. You could create a web site that focused on structured settlements—whatever they are—and put in the AdSense code. If you’re also prepared to put in the effort to be able to write about the topic intelligently for a while (because traffic takes time to build), then you might well find yourself generating some income.
But it’s not a fun way to work, and when you’re not writing about a topic you enjoy, it will feel like work, and it will be hard to do well enough to earn money consistently. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try writing about a subject purely for the high-paying keywords. But I wouldn’t recommend it. I think that choosing a topic you enjoy will always be better in the long run. You might be packing away fewer dollars for each KaChing but you’ll generating more KaChings, and most important, you’ll be having fun while you’re doing it—so you’ll be able to keep doing it.
But there are things you can do to ensure the subjects you blog about within those topics are the highest-paying subjects possible.
That’s important. Writing about photography in general might deliver ads from stock agencies or camera shops. Writing about equine photography on the other hand might deliver ads from stables and horse breeders—and those ads might pay much more!
When you’re searching for subjects about which to publish, knowing that the ads for one subject are worth more than the ads for another can help to guide you toward the best revenues.
Google, though, won’t tell you how much you’re receiving for each click on a specific ad. Nor is Google the only company that should be serving ads on your web site. However you’re receiving your ads, you should always be tracking the clicks and the money those clicks generate.
You have to do this yourself. Keyword value lists will give you only a vague idea of what a term or a subject is worth. In practice, the amounts change constantly, and they can be different on different web sites. Google uses a practice called Smart Pricing that takes into account not just the amount the advertiser has bid to appear on Web pages, but the actions that users take when they reach the advertiser’s site. The higher the value of your users to the advertiser, the more advertisers will have to pay. And the reverse is also true: A site with visitors who have little connection to the subject will receive little for each ad click, even when the advertiser has expressed a willingness to pay more.
Once you’ve decided on an overall topic for your web site, you should then write on different subtopics and track the revenues that those pages generate.
